Wikipedia:Describe external links

If you link to another website, you should give your reader a good summary of the site's contents, and the reasons why this specific website is relevant to the article in question. If you cite an online article, try to provide as much meaningful citation information as possible. Examples:

Link with uninformative description	Link with informative description
Common knowledge (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884666,00.html)	Common knowledge (http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,884666,00.html). Editorial by Ben Hammersley[?], The Guardian, January 30, 2003. Discusses the Wikipedia idea and provides a general summary of the wiki concept.
The Memory Hole (http://www.thememoryhole.org/)	The Memory Hole (http://www.thememoryhole.org/) by Russ Kick, a website which "exists to preserve and spread material that is in danger of being lost, is hard to find, or is not widely known" [1] (http://www.thememoryhole.org/about.htm). It is regularly updated with new documents, which are often obtained by the editor himself through Freedom of Information Act requests. The site also provides links to reports on external sites.

If you are dealing with controversial issues, it is also useful to point out which sites take which stance (you could separate the links by proponents and critics, for example); funding information or relationships may also be interesting. When linking to commercial site, you may also wish to provide information on registration requirements and other limits, especially unexpected ones.

Websites can take a long time to load, and a long time to evaluate. Try making it easier for the reader to choose which sites to visit.